Qatar Qsucks
So, most of you who have been around for a while may remember me talking about my sister. She's five years younger than me, but a million times more adventurous. Lauren has been living in Boston for the past five or so years- school and work. She had come across an opportunity to travel to Nepal to do some volunteer work in a Buddhist monestary. She would be teaching English to the monks there (ages 8 to 12).
For the past few months, she has been preparing for the trip, quitting her job, sub-letting her apartment, buying traveling necessities, and the like. When the time came for her to leave, she had unfortunately come down with the horrendous GI illness that we all had. So, Lauren delayed her trip for two weeks.
Finally, she was on her way. On Saturday, June 16th, she left Boston for her journey. The first flight she took was from Boston to Heathrow. She was certainly tired, but happy to be halfway there.
The next flight was from Heathrow to Qatar. What? You've never been there? You don't know where it is? Well I didn't. In case you don't- here is Qatar.
Beautiful, no? The blinking arrow is quite helpful.
Anyway, Lauren got to Qatar, got detained, was stripped of her passport, had her luggage ransacked, and was questioned. While that was going on, the airport canceled all of her flights to follow. They informed her that the next flight to Nepal was in one week.
We believe she was red-flagged on the plane to Qatar because she was all of the following: a 23 year-old, single traveler on a multi-flight trip halfway across the world, and having only e-tickets. (The e-tickets because there was no time for paper ones when she rescheduled). However, we'll never completely know.
This was about when our family lost our shit. We were on the phone with Lauren and International Agents trying to get her the hell out of the middle east. After hours and hours and hours, Lauren boarded a flight to Bahrain and then to London, before eventually coming back into New York yesterday afternoon. You wouldn't believe the money she lost because of the flights if I told you.
Can you imagine? She was either in an airport or on a plane from Saturday morning to Tuesday afternoon. Four days.
Labels: Nerual
4 Comments:
That's a shitter. Qatar's an odd place. Most of the flights out that direction would stop off at Dubai though which is, all in all, a much more hospitable place and very used to tourists and people on stopovers. Qatar is the opposite, very like Saudi.
Does this mean the trip's abandoned?
Talk about your deja vu. I know exactly how your sister feels. I bet her passport is flagged now as well, as is mine. She will most likely need a Visa to travel now and maybe needed one then and didn't have one? To stay any extended period in any foreign country, that country/place of work is to sponsor you and help provide a work visa. My previous unlucky trip took me almost 12,000 miles from a saturday to a tuesday as well. Hey, maybe I AM your sister.
I really like your place here.. and your pics are awesome. I'd love to live somewhere like that. I'm glad your sister made it back to the states safely. T
I kept visualizing "Midnight Express."
Glad she made it out safely.
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